release me
by MadnessIsTheMurderer
Summary: Your walls are so high, you're such a coward. Let me invade, let me tear them down. You don't have to be alone. We don't have to live without each other. 'When a universe-switch is more real than others.. Semi-dark Fic.
1. Chapter 1

With a soundtrack that didn't belong to the city, Tanaka Machi watched out the window at the passing traffic. Cars and people moved in this way and that, obeying and breaking the rules set by a government everyone saw but never met, all at once.

It was the usual commute she traveled on a daily basis, she knew. To fourteen year old Machi, the bustling confusion of Tokyo was all she knew since birth. Her parents were lawyers, she lived in a house that seemed too empty and too large with family who lied for a living and continued said lifestyle at home.

In her mind, her entire life was an act to which she played the lead part, a girl too bored with the entirety of everything that the teen angst brought forth by puberty often caused her to contemplate suicide, if only to find some excitement to the dullness of the every day.

Maybe, she thought, her parents wouldn't be such stone statues of obstructed, twisted justice and be something of emotion and feelings, were she to be standing at the top of that twenty-something story tower they worked inside. Maybe, she thought, they would show some of the affection she had seen other children receive but was never granted herself.

Yet they were only thoughts, only ideas. Machi knew she was a coward, she was weak; she was able to imagine being brave but was never able to act. In her mind she made herself to be strong, to be the most courageous amongst those her age.

She knew she wasn't anything she led others to believe, though. She knew those people in her private school – the ones who followed her with smiles and praise, who called themselves friends but who were nothing more than a dim distraction to the norm – believed she were stoic and strong, funny and fearless, brilliant and bold.

In the dark, where no one could see, she was someone unrecognizable. In the privacy of her inner self, Machi was a self-destructive teen, begging, yearning, dying for affection, attention. Some days she would sit in silence and think of all the things she could do with her easy life, with all the money she had access to. Other days she would read, over and over, the books that spoke of daring adventure and dangerous arrangements.

And she realized just how uninteresting her life was. More than once she had caught herself with a blade inches away from her wrists, hoping that she would be reborn into a more exciting life, a life where she could hold a sword or run from assassins.

Never would that happen, she knows. Like all humans, she feared the unknown. Whatever happened after death was strange and foreign, something no one had ever been able to report on.

So she walked across the busy streets of Tokyo like every day, letting the music of her iPod drown out the ever-familiar jumble of voices and mumble of engines that she grew up listening to. She takes the ever-familiar route to the ever-familiar bookstore she visits every day after school, always picking up a new manga to add to her growing collection of things unable to ease her disinterest.

"Hey," said the ever-familiar boy working the counter, the one who always anticipated her visit, who always waited patiently for her arrival. So maybe he was seventeen, so maybe she was fourteen. Did that matter? Was age entirely a question between two people in love?

Never would he know that his love for the girl was one-sided – he would never receive the courage to tell her how he felt. Despite all the times they conversed over the most interesting of manga or the most dull of plot-lines, she would never hold anything more than platonic feelings towards the beautiful boy.

"Anything new?" she asked in response, otherwise ignoring his presence and continuing straight to the back of the quaint little store. Standing before the manga shelf, she browsed quickly for anything she did not already own. Too many series she had read and finished, too many books had she arranged into heavy boxes and placed in the basement where all things went to be forgotten. Nowadays, she only came in for one series, always hoping, always waiting-

"New Naruto came in, actually."

And quickly her head snapped to him in anticipation, knowing that she hadn't seen it on the shelves and he would – most likely – be grasping it in his hands for her to steal.

"Ah-" she began, reaching for the book he held out as he approached her. But before she could grab it, he pulled it back towards himself and just out of her arm-stretch.  
>"Nope, can't have it," came his teasing. Bringing the book behind his back, he watched in amusement as she placed her hands on her hips, gave him a lopsided smile, one he clearly recognized as a, 'what the hell are you doing, idiot?' kind. "For a price, I <em>guess <em>I could give it to you..."

She sighed, kicked her feet a few times, smiled sweetly.

"Please, Teru-sama, can I buy the book?" It had worked before, maybe he would fall for the cute-girl act again.

Though she saw his determination falter for a moment or two, he held his ground, smiled slyly and looked down at her small, 5'2" frame with nothing but interest.

"Not gonna cut it this time, Machi," he assured.

So she sighed, relaxed in her stance. Her eyes dropped to the usual unamused look she carried in her life, lips turning downwards in the frown that always seemed present.

"Just give me the book, Teru, or I'll get mad with you." Stretching her hand out, she awaited for the book. Complacently, he placed it there and together they walked towards the cash register.

"Any plans for today? Or just the usual brooding?"

She didn't answer his rude question, simply placed the bills upon the counter and awaited the usual amount of change.

"So... just the brooding."

"It's not brooding," Machi harshly shot in reply, though even she could hardly believe her words. All she did was sit and mellow in her thoughts, growing more and more distant from the world she wished to vanish from with every day that passed.

He gave her that look of simple disbelief, like one would look at someone who blatantly lied to them – which she had. "You don't hang out with friends-"

"I don't have friends."

"You don't make any attempt to make some-"

"They're pointless and a waste of time."

"And you don't go out at all!"

"It's boring."

"Christ, Machi!" he finally exclaimed, his worry for the girl he so not-so-secretly loved finally exploding. "You're gonna go off the deep end if you don't interact with people."

"But I am interacting," she calmly admitted, taking her change and book and slowly backing up towards the door. "I talk to you, don't I?"

And as his eyebrows furrowed together and his mouth opened to dismiss that as counting, she waved her goodbye and exited the store.

Without awaiting to get home, she cracked open her new book, ever eager to begin and become lost in the tale that had engulfed her from the moment she began it, little over a week ago. She loved the Naruto series, loved the characters and the plot and the twists and turns. She loved the interactions between those inside the story, loved the way things always played out and loved that protagonist, that blond boy who had defied so much to become so much more.

Her music had drowned out too much of the outside world for her to have been warned.

She had been too engulfed in the book to have been aware of the speeding man, of those waving hands frantically, of the honking and screaming and – eventually – the car itself.

It had been the lights that warned her of the danger, the dull headlights of the thing about to assault her.

It seemed to move in slow motion, how it all happened. Her eyes pulled away from the pages, faced towards the car slowly making itself towards her. Almost futilely she could feel herself trying to avoid it, but she moved slower than the car, almost too slow to have been moving at all.

And she closed her eyes as she awaited the pain...

…

She awoke to a quickened pulse, heavy breathing, symptoms similar to waking from a nightmare. With cold sweat all along her being, she slowly sat up, holding her head as beeping sounded throughout it.

God, she was getting a headache... Not only from the excessive beeping noise but from the stench of bleach and...

Oh, god, she finally realized, looking around the room she found herself in. White walls, white bedsheets, a window that overlooked a lush place that could never be near home – she was in a hospital.

Yet... something was off. It was older, the scenery outside her window rustic and foreign, the beeping too different than the machines she often heard on the television medical dramas she once watched to ease her boredom.

How could she have prepared herself for the adventure that she was about to go on? How could she have known that the dull, repetitive life she lived in Tokyo would some day be something she yearned to return to?

Certainly not she, or – at least – not until he walked in.

He, the one she knew as Umino Iruka.


	2. Chapter 2

She would have asked the obvious question – where am I? – had the answer not been blatant. She had seen this type of scenery multiple times in both the manga and anime she watched of the series she had fallen in love with, she knew instantly where she was; Konoha. More specifically, Konoha's hospital.

The panic welling inside her bubbled and boiled over as Iruka mumbled on and on about things she was unable to concentrate on, Machi's mind reeling and revolting of the likeness of the dream-turned-reality she was placed in. As a last effort to distinguish her mind from her hopes, she pinched herself. A bit too hard, she realized after releasing a cry of pain.

"Is something wrong?" Iruka asked, but how was she to answer?

Would she say, 'yes'? Would she tell him that only moments ago she had been in Tokyo, had picked up the newest volume of the book which he was forever stuck inside? Would she say how absurd the entirety of it was, that she had previous been hit by a car and should-

Oh. Hit by a car. That's right, she had been hit in Tokyo and-

She must be dead, she realized. She had always dreamed of dying and being reborn into a Naruto universe, or at least somewhere more exciting than the average normality of her traditional life. She had always been too weak to do it herself, but that driver – that brilliant driver going too fast at the wrong time! – had ended that terrible cycle of want-and-fear for her. She was dead, she was reborn in a life far more interesting than she could ever imagine.

But her parents. What of them? What of the people that called themselves her 'friends'? What of them, of Teru and his final statements of concern before she-

Before she died. How would they take her death?

With the reality of it hitting her hard, she pulled her legs into her stomach, leaving the white blanket of the hospital to cover her. Maybe the despair she felt overtook too much of her to leave effort for its removal, no matter how much her body was heating up with the understanding of all that the man before her represented. Umino Iruka existed in stories and pages, not real life and flesh. But she could see him; she, herself, existed before him; she had felt the sting of fingernails biting into the flesh on her arm. The unknown was frightening, Machi knew, and this was far more unknown than she would ever wish to be victim to. Of course, she had read many fanfictions on her laptop of such events occurring, where other authors with nothing better to do with their lives had created a story plot in which an unsuspecting fan was sucked into the world that existed within the mind of a Japanese author alone.

They had always seemed happy, she remembered. They had always took in stride, always thought it was the biggest blessing instead of the hazard it was – did a regular person know anything of ninjustus or taijutsu or _genjutsu?_ Did a normal person have chakra? Could a normal person forced into a make-believe world do anything similar to that of which they read about?

_Why had they always been so god-damn happy?_

Being torn away from home? Maybe that was a good thing, Machi could see some light in that. She could mature more than she already had, she could understand herself better, she could sate her desire for adventure and difference from the norm.

Having a break from the controlling, up-tight lawyer parents who treated her as nothing more than leverage should they ever feel a divorce was in order? Yes, that was a great thing, maybe. She could grow to miss them, she could come to realize the goodness in them despite all the coldness they showed towards her, come to grips with all the special, once-in-a-lifetime events that they had both missed in favor of work.

But being dead? Being dead was frightening, even if another life was granted to you.

Being in a world not your own? That was scary; how would one survive with no knowledge of basic survival like others had been raised knowing?

"Machi?"

And her head snapped up and out of her self-destructive thoughts, and she was face-to-face with the teacher she had once hoped she would have. He was so close, she could feel his hot breath, see the different colours in his eyes as he stared into her own, concerned and worried about the mental state of the once-comatosed student of his. Closing the gap, he placed his forhead upon hers, feeling the heat of her body spike at not only her rising hysteria but at the embarrassment of being so close to a man she had once admired as being valiant and courageous – traits she oh-so-often desired for herself to possess.

"You're burning up," he exasperated, quickly jumping away from her and rushing towards the door which, Machi assumed, led to the rest of the hospital. "Nurse!" But he rushed back to her before an attendant could get in the room, his hands uselessly in the air, afraid to touch the girl with tears now falling from her eyes, afraid to leave her in case it worsened.

"I don't wanna be dead," she choked out between heavy sobs. It nearly broke his heart, hearing a voice like hers sound so defeated and afraid. "I-I wanna go home!" And even though she said it, even though they were the main force pushing her towards a life of desolate solitude and harrowing thoughts, she weakly believed her words, "I want my parents!"

Hearing her say that shocked him out of his worry, crashed him out of the dizzying confusion he had previously been in after feeling her spiking temperature. Maybe it was from the fever that she was saying such crazy things, maybe she was hallucinating because she was tired and scared and sick.

He held her, then. Wrapped his arms around the crying girl with the unkempt black hair and nervous, blurry gray eyes shedding tears like clouds shed rain.

"Shh," he cooed, imagining it was the best response to a crying child begging for parents that would never be present. It was what he had wanted, Iruka remembered, when he had been young and alone; someone to hold him close and say things only remotely comforting, things that sounded nice but had no meaning; lies and words that formed together to form a false truth one could hold close and continue forwards with. "You'll be home soon, Machi. Your parents are in a better place now, they're happier where they are. They'll always look down on you..."

And when her crying stopped, he thought he had done the right thing. But as he felt hands against his chest and he moved back, he was greeted by her eyes, wide and horrified, amongst the paleness of her pretty, young face.

"They're... dead?"

But maybe the news wasn't surprising, Machi thought. Maybe that was how it was – the dead entered the Naruto world. She had been the only that died in that car accident, why would her parents be where she was? Unless they died in the regular Tokyo she had formerly lived, they would be dead in the Konoha she currently did.

"I'm sorry," Iruka had managed to mumble. He hadn't expected to be comforting the girl. He had just come for his regular check up on her – it was his duty as her teacher, he had decided when the accident had originally occurred – and she just happened to be awake when he entered. He hardly knew how to respond, she was acting so peculiar. It was as if everything she knew had been erased, everything was strange and distant and new and old all at once.

He thought she would cry again, thought he would need to pull her close and hold her once more to him until she stopped sobbing so harshly and fell back asleep, allowed her unconscious mind to sort out the information retrieved in her awaken state.

But she didn't. Slowly, Machi nodded, eyes low and one hand wiping away the tears of fear she had previously shed in a panic. She might have been scared, but only because it was new. It was unknown, she felt like a child lost in a shopping mall, separated from their ride home. She felt helpless, abandoned, so deserted. But that feeling was washed away when Iruka had held her, when he had said such words to her in the kindest of tones like he had been there all her life, like he was the father she so often wished he could have been.

When he had showed her that kindness, she realized she wasn't alone – she wouldn't need to face death on her own. It seemed better than her normal life, she finalized. In Tokyo, she had been a figment of her imaginary, a creation of her own desire. She had made herself to be everything she was not, a strong, confident woman of mystery and spunk, when in reality she was a coward far too ashamed of her life and the distant parents that ruled over her future with an iron fist that she never brought home anyone, never got close enough to others in fear that her parents would one day forbid their friendship in order to progress her future.

And she was so weak, she would have done their bidding. Would have pushed away her 'friends' like they were nothing more than idle toys for children that she was outgrowing.

But in this world she could be anyone. She could be courageous, she could be bold. She could speak out and fight and run and scream and have the time of her life. She could be dangerous, she could live dangerously – she was already dead, wasn't she? What all did it matter if there was no life left to live for?

"Machi, are... are you alright?"

With a smile she regarded him kindly, sweetly even, as she nodded her answer. "Yeah. I'm fine."

Still, he sat on the bed, facing her with those eyes she had once analyzed on paper, now in person. They were brown with hints of hazel and chestnut within them, shards and slivers of different shades dancing around the black pupil she stared at. Too often she had wondered what type of man Iruka would be in real life – now she knew.

Kind. Caring. Sweet. Fatherly. All things she had assumed from reading the series but had always been unable to confirm.

The nurse entered, put her hand against Machi's head, her chest, took her pulse and looked at the primitive machines. With a sigh, the nurse smiled to Iruka, "She's doing fine for just waking up from a coma. She should be able to go home tonight."

"Coma?" Machi repeated, eyes wide in amazement and wonder. "How long was I out?"

The nurse smiles at the cheery attitude the fourteen year old has. "Two weeks, dear. Two weeks."

…

"Is this my place?"

Unsurprised by the question she poses, Iruka looked over his shoulder with a smile, hands busily undoing the lock on the front door.

"No, this is my house," he answered.

"Ah..." As the door swung open, he turned and stared at the girl standing a meter away, kicking the dirt road beneath her feet with eyes downcast and watching the dust she created. Slowly her head raised and – when those gray eyes met his own – he noticed the loneliness she had previously concealed. "Then, where is my house?"

He hadn't informed the girl of his plans, Iruka then realized. That look of being lost was in her eyes, she was afraid of the world around her. But he could understand that, he could relate – when he had been orphaned, he felt lonely at first, too. At first.

So he smiled sweetly, took two steps to close the distance between them and held her hands in his own. He was her teacher at one point, yes, but seeing her in such a broken state made him feel more like an older brother, like a father, than anything professional at all.

"Until you get adjusted again, you'll live with me, okay?"

And when Machi looked down to her hands clasped firmly in his own, she made note of how it felt. The warmth went through her porcelain skin and penetrated her bones, shockwaves of an unknown pleasure coursing throughout all 206 pieces of her structural frame. In that moment, she began to wonder if her parents had ever really held her hand. She couldn't recall a time, even when she was in Tokyo, when they hadn't been rich. Always they lived in the large house, always she had maids and nannies running the house while her mother and father were preoccupied at the offices they never seemed to leave.

As tears popped to and fell from those shadowy eyes, she came to the conclusion that, no, they had never held her hand. They had never spent time with her, had never comforted her when she cried or listened when she complained. Even when her heart was broken when her crush of three years moved away, they hadn't cared. Even when she was devastated at the loss of her first dog, they hadn't made any attempt to help her.

Helplessly, Iruka stood before and watched as the fourteen year old child before him cried out like a six year old, tears falling quick and fast from her almost-closed eyes, mouth slightly open as sobs broke through, arms and hands limp as he held them.

She was so destroyed by the loss of her parents, he thought. And although it might not have been absolutely correct, he was quite close to the truth. Machi had always known her parents were lost to her. She always knew they weren't in her life, that they were only the people she owed for her miserable existence instead of people she actually considered parents. She had always felt that loss – this was just the first time she was expressing it.

"I-!" she started, sobs cutting her sentence short. "I wish you had been my father!"

And in that sentence laid no words of lies.

…

That night, while he laid on the couch to sleep, he heard nothing but the suppressed sobs and tiny cries of a desperate and dreary teenage girl.


End file.
